Inktober 2017 – Day Four

Inktober 2017

Righto, onto Day 4. The one to draw today is the Burning Man. Now, before I explain what I’m doing with this character, the honest truth is I don’t know yet.. entirely. But it’s a good image for a cover design or something. So this character, is, well, dead… He dies… His death investigation is the main point of the story and everything that comes to light from the investigation is because of his death. So yeah, he’s pretty important, and he’s found, well, burning. So, yeah, I wasn’t kidding with my reference to it being the most Halloweeny themed one yet :’ )

Day 4, The Burning Man.

So as I previously mentioned, I honestly had no idea what to do for this sketch until I randomly found a good reference image that had nothing to do with what I was searching for (Day 3’s failed reference search, so at least something good came from it). So I was essentially winging this one, but I like how the idea’s come about.

When finding the link (http://viktorthings.tumblr.com/) for the reference image, I actually had a look at the tumblr account. I really like the whole theme and some of the images, may take a few for my Artist’s inspiration board, so yeah, give it a look if you have a bit of time.

I’m also not sure whether to change the hand to be more charred or damaged, but I may do that when I colourise it, so for now, just the main sketch will be good. I’m also not sure what I will do for the background so I will just keep that in pencil for now as well (Slightly cheating in an INKtober challenge, but I don’t know how I’m meant to convey Depth of field with Ink :’ ) )

The Drawing

Since this image had come from a reference I hadn’t fully thought about how I was going to tackle it, more think on my feet. So, I decided to use a thick angled fine liner for this one. Since I’m portraying charring and ash and all things fire, a thick line to experiment with I thought was the best way to approach it. So sticking with those plans, I drew a simplistic but smudgy background for the depth of field.

Literally layering up the B type pencils up to 8B for this really made me happy. I’ve missed using my big messy techniques and materials that get your hands dirty (my usual technique…expressionist things) so this Inktober is a real juxtaposition for me.

Keeping the background smudgy and in 8B pencil, I started sketching in the hand. I’m not really sure about how the thick fine liner went, however I found a nice way to create really subtle shadow with it, which I’m very happy about. The black contrast really conveyed charring well, which is also what I set out to do, which makes me happy.

Hab_Art Tips#1 – One thing you must always remember about when drawing hands, they will look weird when drawing them. No matter how well you have your proportion or however mundane or extravagant the pose is, it’ll always look odd. TRUST ME, when I say not to give up on it and just keep going. They will look like hands, just don’t rub it out or change it, then they will look weird in the outcome.

When tackling the flame, I wasn’t sure how to make it stand out from the smudgy black marks. I then remembered a technique I was taught about WAYYY back in GCSE, which I later revisited in A level. This was one of the ways in which we were told that Alison Lambert (Link below) used in creating her amazing charcoal portraits. She is particularly important in my early development of my current expressionist style, bar Guy Denning (Link below), as she introduced me to charcoal, my go to media, to how to properly use line/tone/shadow and to not give up. I originally hated her style, as I couldn’t do it. It frustrated me, so much, for days. A homework assignment was to recreate portraits with her style, and I just couldn’t do it, until I learnt how to just rework, layer, and a new way to use a rubber. One of the main reasons I got so annoyed was I couldn’t get the lighter parts once the charcoal had smudged purposely or accidentally there. So once I learnt to take it away with the rubber and replace it with more paper and rework, it clicked and my style pushed a lot further forward. But my style influences is another post. For now, I decided to rub out the sections for the flame, and since it was the main topic, I will go in with fine liner (the thinner one and thicker one) for the flame with a small amount of colour.

And this is how the drawing turned out. I REALLY like how this one finished up, especially since it was such a random occurrence of an idea. I maybe would have preferred the background to be more smudgy, maybe with charcoal. But I didn’t want to stray too far away from the original idea of this challenge.

PHEW, so, Day 3 & 4 down in a day. The one for tomorrow is the “destoyer” which I’m pretty certain they meant the destroyer xD I haven’t put much thought into how to tackle this one either though, as it really doesn’t fit in with any characters I have planned or potential characters. I also can’t make it the killer, too obvious and it would ruin the upcoming story, (or have I already done the killer, who knows). Either way, I’ll have to sleep on it.

Post navigation

6 comments

[…] own picture. So I thought I’d do that with a similar technique I did for the previous image (Day 4). I would layer all of the people up with very sketchy loose lines, with little to no details, […]

[…] that I’d always had in mind, so I thought it was a good one to use, especially for the was the Burning Man died (spoilers). So a water race is what we will be going with. Name for the race? No idea. Name of […]

[…] the new brush pen has given, as well as the fact it gives me a guideline as to how the original Burning Man crime occurs. Now I just have to go from that to advance the story further. But it’s great […]